The rise, fall, and resurrection of my channel on Mixer.

So, I had a channel on the game streaming platform Mixer. It was called Noob School, and the idea was for my community to embrace the “easy” mode in games. I can be competitive, but I wanted my channel to be a place where people could relax, and hang out. It grew pretty consistently, and I think it still has somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 followers.

But then I stopped streaming. I gave myself (and my friends) plenty of reasons why I stopped. Now that I have time to sit and reflect on it, I realized that I subconsciously fell into the trap that most people fall into when they start a stream, or a YouTube channel, or anything of that sort: I wanted it to grow faster than it was ready for. I told myself early on, and during, that *that* wasn’t the reason, but I had to be realistic with myself… that was the reason.

We always want our projects to grow and succeed. Sometimes, we want it to grow at a pace that we aren’t ready for. Deep down, that was my approach to Noob School. It’s an approach I shouldn’t allow myself to wrap my emotions around.

I say all of that to say I’m going to resume Noob School streaming, sometime in the Spring. However, I’m taking the approach to that stream the way I’m taking the approach to this blog.

I tell people that Project Downtime is a blog that I write for myself, and other people just happen to have a chance to read it to.

Noob School will be a stream primarily for me, because I genuinely enjoy broadcasting, but it’ll just so happen that other people are invited to come in, watch, and share in that emotional ride with me. For me, I need to see this as a stream for Marques, that invites Marques’ friends along.

I know that sounds odd, because why would a person want to ‘stream for themselves’? If I see this just as broadcasting because broadcasting is fun (and I really do enjoy the type of broadcaster I become) my only expectation is that the internet works, and I don’t lose my voice. If I go in wanting it to be this instant classic, parts of me change, parts of me gets modified just to amp entertainment value.

I can’t do that. I can only be me. I can only be the person that I am. If people find that entertaining (as 100+ people seem to have) then I need to count that blessing and move forward. If I never reach 1000 followers or 5 subscriptions or Mixer partner, that’s all ok. If my channel helps one person feel entertained, and gives them something to do in the evening, I’ve done my part.

So, yeah, Noob School (I’m keeping that name; it won’t change to Project Downtime) will be coming back in the next few months. I need to figure out a schedule that I can stick with, and what games I want to play (I’m not about playing the latest games, I mean my first game streamed was NBA Jam). So keep to this blog, or follow the channel on Mixer to know when school will be back in session.